Once Upon a Curse
by sonofacurse
Summary: Regina awakens to a newly cursed Storybrooke, and having forgotten all about Henry and Emma she goes on a quest to restore the damage done by Pan's curse. But matters get complicated when Regina's actions interfere with the plans of a dark enemy, and her age old thirst for vengence returns.


**Very sorry for those who read my previous story, I kind of lost track of its plot myself, so im doing this as a reboot of sorts, I promise that I will try not to make the same mistakes again, I was trying to put too many characters into the story, and the storylines got messed up, please give this one a shot and tell me what you think, once again sorry for the inconvenience. Ps english isnt my native language so if the grammar and spelling is slightly off do forgive me:)**

Once Upon a Curse

Chapter 1

Regina took a sharp breath in as the new curse swallowed them up. She felt the solid ground beneath her feet give way, and her body being flung like an old rag through time and space. Darkness closed in on her, as her memories became blurred, slowly she began to forget, and as the moments passed she experienced a brief moment of serenity, she was free, free from her past as the evil queen, free from her past as the heartless mayor, just for that moment she forgot about the mistakes she made, she forgot about the pain, she was happy. But as soon as her happiness emerged it disappeared again, as her eyes shot open. She was in bed.  
In Storybrooke…

Mary Margret walked through the empty streets of the hazy little town. An unpleasant cold breeze swept through the trees, causing her to shudder. She couldn't remember a day that Storybrooke wasn't cold and glum, and thoughts of leaving the town constantly plagued her. Why she didn't just pack her stuff and leave remained a mystery to her since she didn't have much of a life in the depressed little town anyway. She paused in front of the school gates, sighing deeply before entering. Groups of children played happily on the grounds, it was a day like any other. That is until the mayor stormed through the doors.  
"Sorry for interrupting, Miss Blanchard can I have a word?"  
The look on the mayors face clearly indicated that it was urgent.  
"I'll be right there Madame Mayor."  
Regina stood patiently in the hall as the other woman told the class to go on with their work before joining her in the hall.  
"How long have you worked here?"  
Mary Margret gave her a confused look.  
"Since I can remember, why?"  
Regina gasped slightly, it was like the curse had never been broken, like time had been reversed. No one remembered their true identities. No one except her.  
Though she did destroy the scroll and the curse it seemed that somehow something went wrong. It was almost like the curse underwent a reset.  
"Never mind, I was just curious. Thank you for your time."  
Regina turned and headed toward the door, leaving a confused Mary Margret to return to her classroom. Inside a rush of emotions overwhelmed her, if the curse has indeed reestablished itself, then it meant that she was back in a position of power. A smile crept onto her face, but disappeared as a certain amount of guilt began to grow in the pit of her stomach. She had to undo it, it would be the right thing to do. She tried to remind herself that she has changed, she wasn't the Evil Queen anymore. She was Regina.

Hook stood inside the house, looking at the splintered doors. He tried knocking, but alas his impatience got the better of him. The result was a broken door, and still no answer. He knew the Queen had to be somewhere, but after searching through the town again and again he couldn't find her, and he needed answers. Something was wrong with the town, no one seemed to remember who they were, and he knew this to be the effects of the curse. So the only logical explanation would be that Regina tricked them.  
"I don't like intruders in my house."  
The sound of her voice was accompanied by a searing pain around his throat, and an invisible force sending him flying into the air.  
"Well I'd hoped you would make an exception for a friend love."  
She smiled dropping him to the floor.  
"I would hardly consider you a friend Hook, just because you helped me in Neverland it doesn't make us friends."  
The word Neverland made both of them go silent. They remembered their journey there, tough the reason for the undertaking of that journey remained a mystery.  
"You remember?"  
The fact that Hook seemed to remember just fine confused her, the curse cloud did after all consume him as well.  
"Yes, I do, but it seems that no one else does. Care to explain why that is?"  
Regina walked over to the window, staring at the grey skies.  
"Well, I'm just grasping at straws here, but it seems that my curse has once again fallen over this town. I don't know how it happened, I did everything the scroll told me to do. Somehow it seems that you evaded it, and if my suspicions are correct it might be because you weren't cursed the first time."  
Hook gave a sarcastic laugh.  
"Really Regina, you expect me to believe that everyone one falls back under your curse accidentally? Just be coincidence?"  
She shook her head in disbelief.  
"What? You think that I orchestrated all of this, as some master plan to reenact my curse?"  
She was getting irritated, she didn't have to take this. She didn't need to listen a pirate throwing false accusations her way when she had better things to do. But Hook wasn't about to back down, he wanted answers, and he wanted them now.  
"Well if the shoe fits…"  
His sentence was cut short as he was flung back against the wall. Regina walked up to him, her gaze venomous.  
"Now here's what's going to happen, you are going to stop throwing false accusations my way, and you're going to help me figure out what went wrong. I don't know how this happened, and I assure you that it wasn't my intentions. Now you can either help me, or stay out of my way, your call."  
He nodded in agreement, and she released her grip on him.  
"So where do we begin?"  
Regina walked over to him, taking his hand.  
"My vault."  
With these words both of them disappeared in a puff of purple smoke.

In the darkness of the Storybrooke mines a strange phantom moved swiftly across the dirt. Not far ahead of it stood an ominous cloaked figure in the darkness. The shadowy creature came to a stop mere inches from the other one, hovering menacingly over it, and staring at it with two gleaming white eyes. The cloaked figure didn't seem at all intimidated by the shadow, as it looked at it from the darkness of its hood.  
"I trust everything went as planned?"  
The hoarse voice echoed through the caves, as the cloaked figure broke the silence.  
"Yes, soon our plan will be put in motion and this town won't know what hit them. I will finally have my vengeance, and you will have your freedom."  
The cloaked figure seemed satisfied with the shadows answer.  
"And the Queen?"  
A short silence loomed between the two, as the shadow carefully considered how to break the news.  
"Unfortunately she and a few others retained their memories, but they don't remember the other woman or the boy."  
This visibly upset the cloaked figure, as a blue light began to emanate from it.  
"Find her and destroy her, we can't have her snooping around this town, she will only get in the way."  
The shadow seemed to have other plans, as it flew closer to the other figure.  
"I suggest we keep her alive, for if we can manage to corrupt her soul again, she can make a powerful ally."  
The idea seemed to appeal to both of them, as the cloaked figure nodded in agreement.  
"Fine, but make sure she doesn't uncover anything that might threaten our plans. With that boy out of the picture, corrupting her might not be as hard a task as I previously imagined, we only need to remind her of who she truly is, and why she cursed these people in the first place."  
The shadow seemed satisfied with this, as it nodded respectfully before disappearing into the darkness once again. The cloaked figure removed its hood, revealing a mop of brown hair, neatly tied in to a bun.

Hook slightly stumbled as the two of them rematerialized in the murky vault. He always hated it when he teleported with Cora, and it wasn't much different with Regina, it always left him feeling disorientated for hours.  
"How do you not get sick from doing that?"  
Regina smirked at seeing the pirate's obvious discomfort.  
"One gets used to it after a few times."  
The two of them made their way past her vault of hearts, and Hook couldn't help but feel the slightest bit of discomfort as they passed the beating organs. The sound reminded him of the moment Rumplestiltskin ripped Milah's heart from her chest. The memory caused a sharp pain in his heart.  
"So, who do these belong to?"  
Regina seemed to be in world of her own as she passed all the cabinets, listening to the sound of the hearts. It brought up equally unpleasant memories for her. Memories of the fateful day she killed her mother thanks to the devices of Snow White, it reminded her of the day Daniel died. It reminded her of all the lives she destroyed in her past.  
"I have long since forgotten."  
Hook could see that she was experiencing some amount of unpleasant emotions, so they quickened their pace, heading for the doorway that lead to room where Regina used to keep the scroll. They found it neatly placed where she had left it the first time the curse was enacted.  
"Great, so now we have your scroll, what's next?"  
Regina carefully read everything she could find on the scroll, but she discovered nothing she didn't already know.  
"Well, I could attempt the same ritual I used just before Pan's curse swallowed us up. But if that doesn't work the scroll will be destroyed and we will have nothing to start from."  
Regina stared at the scroll, still trying to see if there wasn't some hidden message somewhere inside of it. Then something caught her eye. A red object, lying on a shelf on the other side of the room. She decided to take a closer look at it. A hand was imprinted on the object, with the words "for mommy" written across it. The words seemed familiar to Regina, and she tried to dig into her memories.  
"Everything alright love?"  
She didn't seem to hear Hook, she was too busy figuring out why she couldn't remember who gave her the object. Suddenly flashes of what happened the previous day flooded her mind. She remembered Gold's death, the curse coming and then a young boy, with a mop of brown hair. And a woman, possibly his mother. She remembered saying goodbye to them, and then a yellow bug driving away as the curse swallowed them up. And then nothing, only darkness.

"Regina!"  
She opened her eyes and tried to sit up, but a searing pain in her head made her fall back down. Hook was standing over her, with a worried expression on his face. She wasn't entirely sure what happened, but she remembered the red object, and those words.  
"What happened?"  
She tried to sit up again, this time slowly.  
"You picked up that thing, and then passed out."  
She looked around the room, the object was lying a few feet away, shattered.  
"How long was I out?"  
Hook helped her to her feet.  
"Not long, about ten minutes."  
Then it hit her, the flashes she saw.  
"Hook, do you remember why we went to Neverland? How did Pan come to Storybrooke?"  
The man considered it for a moment, a look of utter confusal growing on his face.  
"No."  
It was like both came to a sudden realization, a realization that something strange was definately going on.  
"It seems that whoever did this to us didn't want us remembering someone, I believe if we can recover our memories we might be able to uncover the truth, and find out how to fix this."  
Hook still tried to recall the events that lead up to the new curse, he recalled only the fact that somehow he went to Neverland to retrieve something of great value to someone. The fact that he could recall nothing more, frustrated and scared him. To know that there were powers in this universe that could literally change your memories and leave you hopeless, without any way to know that you've been cursed, and no way to fix it made him reconsider whether or not he wanted to tamper around with it. But still, if Regina was right and they could fix this he would be selfish not to help her. And yet he couldn't recall why he decided to leave his selfish ways in the first place. Nothing made sense to him anymore.  
"Well your majesty, how do you suggest we recover our lost memories?"  
Regina smiled.  
"When I was a young maiden I trained under Rumplestiltskin. He had many secrets, and one of them was a scroll that was said to be able to show you any point in the past present or future of the world it finds itself in. If we can find this scroll, we should be able to look back in time and see what happened."  
Hook had heard of the scroll before, a lot of sailors in the Enchanted Forest talked about it, and there was rumor that Pan was in search of it while he was Neverland.  
"And where do we find this scroll?"  
Regina sighed, she knew that finding the scroll won't be easy, but she also knew that finding it would mean that she would have a lot of power in her possession. She remembered Rumplestiltskin warning her once that the price for using its magic is higher than anything she will ever be able to pay. And that he locked it away somewhere in the Enchanted Forrest, somewhere neither she nor her curse could have reached it, but now that he was dead, finding it wouldn't be so hard to do.  
"Let's just say that it's going to require a portal and a few friends."


End file.
